Customer Reviews

The Beatles for Ukulele

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book contains 20 popular Beatles tunes presented in the "melody plus chord diagrams" format (no tabs). They are presented in their entirety, in the original keys, which means that you should be able to strum along with the actual recordings. Sounds great, right?

Unfortunately, Hal Leonard has chosen to format the book in such a way that it is practically useless without extensive (illegal) photocopies. The staves are printed HUGE and are spaced extremely far apart from each other, creating numerous unnecessary page turns. How bad is it? The densest page of music in the book still has less that 20 measures of music on it. Some pages have as few as 8 bars! To make matters worse, repeat signs are frequently located a bar or two after a page turn, which means that have to turn the page, then immediately turn the page back again. The last time I checked, it takes two hands to play the ukulele! When you add all the repeat signs, D.S.'s and Codas Many of these songs could have EASILY been printed on two opposing pages.

"The Long and Winding Road", for example, requires 5 page turns over the course of a mere 33 printed measures. "Good Day, Sunshine" also requires 5 page turns to play 33 measures. To play the 40 printed measures of "Michelle" with all the repeats and the coda, you will have to turn a single page back and forth SEVEN times. This is completely inexcusable. Much like a D-student's book report, the creators of this book have used double-spacing and big fonts in order to force the book to be seventy pages long, when the content would probably only require about 20.

I regret buying this book, and I hope other potential buyers will save their money. The book you really want is The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook, (also published by Hal Leonard) which contains the lyrics and chords for 194 beatles songs, requires almost no page turns at all, and is even small enough to fit in my uke case! Unfortunately, that book has guitar chords, not uke chords, so unless you have all your chords memorized, you will need to consult a chord chart. Believe me, it will be a lot less annoying than dealing with "The Beatles for Ukulele."

Any Beatles fan will know that George was an avid ukulele player, and that John's mother taught him to play uke before he picked up a guitar. So it's only fitting that a Beatles book arranged for the four string wonder finally be published.
Once you get past the horribly ugly cover, it's a great book. Sure, it's only got 20 songs and your favorite might not be in there, but it does have chord diagrams for ukulele, that other Beatles collections don't. For the advanced beginner or intermediate player, this book is perfect. If you're an experienced player, this book might be a bit beneath you. For the advanced player, I would recommend "The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook" - all the songs, but no ukulele chord diagrams (just guitar).
http://www.amazon.com/Beatles-Complete-Chord-Songbook/dp/0634022296/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222293532&sr=8-2

But back to that cover... I can understand not being able to license photos of the Fab Four, but at least hire an artist to create a Peter Max style cover. Perhaps for volume 2.

This is a pretty good little book. It definitely saves me the time of having to chart out the chords, and gives suggestions for which inversion to use for each chord, which is good since I'm just starting on uke. Other than that, it just notes the melody apart from the chords, so there are no real arrangements. It is helpful enough for me to come up with my own arrangements based on the chord and melody notation, but what is on the page is really only ideal notation for 2 uke players to sit down, one taking the chords and the other taking the melody.

Before buying it, I should have read the reviews from amazon.com instead of amazon.co.uk (where it is rated with four stars/3 reviews). For me, it's completely useless, as it needs at least 3 pages for each song, so you have to stop and turn the page 1 or 2 times, it has no tabs, no arrangements... I'm really dissapointed!

Ehh....It's ok for absolute beginners,but other than that, disappointing ! It's not so bad that I would return it ,but it's kinda boring.If you want chords go right on ahead, but if you're a tab kinda person stay clear !I got it when I first started playing!

Maybe if you are a complete beginner this book is ok but from my perspective it's terrible and was a complete waste of money. If you want the suckyest, cheesyest ukulele chords possible for 20 great Beatles tunes then this is the book for you. The tab chord diagrams are technically correct for the chord title being displayed but some of the chords are just plain wrong. I was very dissapointed in this book.

This book was purchased for my teenage daughter who just took up the instrument. She is having a blast with the songs, and it is nice to hear her doing some classics versus a lot of the rubbish that passes for "contemporary" music.

All of my favorites seem to be in here, and I look forward to learning songs such as Nowhere Man and Yesterday with the help of this book. What could be more natural than Beatles songs played on a ukulele?

Summary: This book is useless to me as it has no tabs.

I had bought Hal Leonard Ukulele Method Book 1 and found the book a nice intro to playing the Ukulele. But I wanted to play songs that I actualy knew the tune as trying to play "Little Brown Jug" not knowing the song feels rather pointless. I bought this book assuming the publisher was the same and would print the songs in a similar manner including the tabs. As someone with no music background, tabs make sense, they tell you where to place your finger, sure I cant use that info to play another instrument, but if i was looking for sheet music I assume there quite a few options out there. And there is plenty of room on these pages to have included the tabs. Really quite a shame.

I'm teaching myself the uke, love the beatles, and while i love the song selection, i wish it focused more on tableture. that said, if you are into sheet music, this book will be great for you.